The healing waters of Bethesda : a sermon, preached at Buxton Wells, to the company assembled there for the benefit of the medicinal waters : on Whitsunday, June 2, 1811.

  • Buchanan, Claudius, 1766-1815.
Date:
1812
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The healing waters of Bethesda : a sermon, preached at Buxton Wells, to the company assembled there for the benefit of the medicinal waters : on Whitsunday, June 2, 1811. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I man fell from his high estate, like “ the angels which sinned,” and he thus lost the divine image. And after his fall, the state of his heart is thus described by God himself; “ Every imag¬ ination of the thoughts of man’s heart is only evil continually.’* Gen, vi. 5. But though man’s moral qualities were depraved, and he no longer resembled God in purity of heart, certain noble faculties remained with him ; even as we may suppose that high intellectual powers remained with the angels that sinned. His reason approves those things that are excellent, though he follows the worse. He has a longing after immor¬ tality. And we know that his soul is immortal, and that a happy immortality has been offered to him. Thus far then, and no farther, can we speak of the dignity of human nature. Some noble faculties remain with man, and some noble privileges ; the chief of which is, that though he sin against God, he is an object of mercy} While God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment.”—2 Pet. ii. 4. High intellectual powers re¬ main with man \ but his heart is depraved j and, in his will and affections, he is alienated from God. Now our Saviour hath de¬ clared that man being thus depraved by nature must be renew¬ ed, and, as it were, “ bom again” before he can see the king¬ dom of God. And this change of heart, and the grace which produces it, are the subjects of the glad tidings of the Gospel. Man’s chief dignity then is, that he is a subject of mercy : a candidate for a new nature ; an heir of immortality. Man lost the image of God by the fall; and the Son of God hath des¬ cended from heaven to restore that image : that is, to restore it to such a degree of righteousness in this life, that God shall look upon it with complacency and receive it to himself to be perfected in glory. That the image of God is restoied man in this sense, is manifest from almost every page of the New Testament. The apostle Paul addresses believers in these words ; a Ye have put off the old mati with his deeos and